


Often

by Lavender_Seaglass



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Fade stuff is probably going to happen, Female Mage Trevelyan - Freeform, Orlesians, Relationship Struggles, Sera is really nosy, Sexual Frustration, Sort Of, custom names, fade escapades, finding that sweet spot, magi, pseudo gods have weird things going for them, sexual or emotional intimacy, the existence of sex is acknowledged, to be chaste or not, which is better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-02 02:56:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12718218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lavender_Seaglass/pseuds/Lavender_Seaglass
Summary: They've been together long enough to be the subject of friendly jokes. But, they haven't actually been that intimate yet.She wonders if there's something wrong.





	1. i.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a thing I've had on my mind, and an idea I wanted to hash out before working on something longer. The issue of intimacy between a human Inquisitor and Solas is just as much of a conundrum as it is between him and other Inquisitors, so, this is my take on the issue, and how the character themselves might choose to resolve it. 
> 
> The first two parts are relatively safe for work. The third part will not be; the rating will be increased in time to reflect this.

Already, she’s not doing too well.

Losing, with an increasingly vanishing chance of recovering, a minute tremor developing in her fine fingers, she’s now on a number of drinks higher than she could currently manage to count. The alcohol burns as it goes down, searing her numbed throat. She chokes on the burn and hides her heat-rushed face in the back of her forearm as she coughs on a viscous flood of saliva.

And then her companions laugh, the Iron Bull and Sera both. The Qunari to her left, the elf to her right, all three of them are sitting on one side of a table in an Orlesian tavern. It has begun to quiet down, as the nightly diners and regular drinkers have filtered out, leaving mostly the over-night guests remaining, including the scout or two keeping an eye on everything for Leliana. Still, there is a hearty ambiance in the warm, close air that smells of ale in some places, and wreaks of it in others. Two fireplaces—one on either side of the downstairs room—are kept hot and roaring by a red-haired waitress who’s constantly on the move this evening to remove plates or refill drinks. She always seems to know where she’s needed, as she is there each time the Inquisitor needs another drink to keep playing.

The three of them are trying to confound each other with lies. It had seemed like a fun, friendly idea to her at the start, even though she hadn’t forgotten that one of them is a spy, and one of them has had some crazy adventures even she, the adventurer, can’t fully account for. Growing up in the Circle, Althea can’t say she’s exactly familiar with the kind of surprises a grittier side of life might pose to even the cheeriest of vagrants.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” she says, a plaintive note in her voice as the feeling has yet to quite return to her mouth and tastebuds. Not that it’s hard for her to form words, or think of them, in fact there are plenty of them flitting around her head wanting to be used. “I’m really supposed to believe that—that, what? The comte wrote his nugs into his will and his children out when you threatened to burn his topiaries? I would believe a Ferelden leaving his estate to his dog, even of his own free will, but… Well, dogs are so cute, aren’t they? With their faces.”

“It’s the truth though, innit? You can’t come up with some of this stuff. Weirder than what’s in those books you like to read.”

“Novels, they’re called. Fiction.”

“Right then. _Fiction._ ” Sera looks at her with such a wide, exuberant grin pushing up into her red, freckled cheeks, Althea feels she’s certainly stumbled again into another bear trap of a bad decision. “Anyway, your turn now, Bull.”

“All right, then. Mmm,” comes his deep rumble of a voice. To her it sounds as if the heart of a mountain might be booming at its core to discourse with her. “I once had a butterfly land on the tip of my right horn.”

“That’s it, then? That’s your story?” Sera is speaking now, over Althea’s shoulder.

The Inquisitor leans forward, with her elbows pushing against the unvarnished wood of the table. At some point during the night she’d lost her jacket and its leather protection, leaving the lighter layers of her clothing vulnerable to smudges of grease and grim on the various grubby surfaces that might lurk around her. Looking down at her arms now, there is a brackish spot on her left forearm.

Her emotions—the unrelenting feeling that she is being thoroughly dominated in this contest—are still thick in her voice when she exclaims, “That’s a lie, obviously. Butterflies like colourful things. And you, Bull, are completely grey.”

“Now, you know that’s not true. I’ve got—”

“Gonna tell us about your pink and purple bits? I don’t think so. Just tell us, she gotta drink some more? I think this might be it for our brave lady leader.”

“It is,” Bull says with a great bellowing guffaw, “probably going to be her untimely end.”

Letting out a repining groan, Althea downs the last turbid gulp of her wine, and then covers her face again with her palms and fingers as Sera’s squall of giggles rings out.

“All right. How about a new game, now,” Althea offers, a muffled plea to them to have some mercy and show her some grace. Already she’s not getting out with her dignity intact, so maybe they might give her this. Some small shot at redeeming herself.

Sera hums, and then places her callused archer’s hand on Althea’s shoulder.

“Unless you’re volunteering for a strip tease, it’s best you step down, Lady Inquisitor. We can’t have our great leader shitfaced with her head in the privy, I bet. Well, I mean we _could_ , but the laugh might not be worth it for us. Josephine would have Leliana have our heads. Or horns.”

Not able to grasp if it’s kindness or mocking she’s being shown, Althea considers the elf with her back to Bull, the room around them turning into a trembling, murky muddle of red, orange, and browns. Since when had she become such a lightweight, she can’t help but wonder.

It’s embarrassing, not even being able to keep up with a particularly spindly elf.

“Aw, come on, losing isn’t so bad. It just means you aren’t the best.”

“Right, well, there’s something else I have to see taken care of, ” Bull says, as he stands up. The bench of the table creaks loudly beneath him, practically groaning with the relief from the lifting of this terrible burden. With a few steps he is across the tavern and out of the realm of Althea’s possible concern.

With him gone, Sera sidles up to Althea, wrapping her arm over the other woman’s shoulders, making no attempt to be subtle. In her typical fashion, her head doesn’t even drop conspiratorially, and her voice carries a note of the giddy glee of a troublemaker.

“So, then, now we’ve got a moment, I’ve been wondering—”

“Ah, one second, Sera,” Althea interrupts with. She needs to eat something, she thinks. Should have, could have, and would have lined her stomach with something to sponge up the alcohol, if she had known she would let herself get so frisky in the name of a competition. Perhaps, she thinks, she has underestimated how bad she’s been lately at banishing the images of the bone and body pits they found littering the burnt-out Dales. How much she is haunted by indescribable horrors she has had to try and illustrate in reports back to her advisors.

Althea reaches for a gobbet of dried out brown bread remaining from her meal. She attempts to bring the bit of food closer to her, and her stomach goes into a vertiginous dive.

For several seconds, she sits. Very, very still.

Then, looking at her companion, she manages a clammy smile. How she is sweating without her jacket, how she is so warm when she is usually the one who is cold and on the verge of shivering, it’s a morsel of a mystery she normally would try to solve. “What’s on your mind, Sera?”

“You’re sharing the grand suite with Solas, right?”

“Yes. We share a tent now, too.”

“Oooh, look at you, Ms Elfy already getting cheeky,” she says with a chuckle, and slaps the tense area between the Inquisitor’s shoulder blades.

Unaccountably shaken by the burst of non-violence, Althea makes a sound that is tangentially related to a gasp of surprise, and a hickup. “Is that all?”

“No, that was just the starter. Like, preparing the ground, for the big parade that’s gonna come. I wanted to know, what’s he like. You know, in the sheets, or the bedroll. Has he cried anything about elven glory yet? I have a bet with—”

“Sera.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t keep you out of the pot if you want in—”

“Sera!”

This time, her indignation makes a point, her rising panicked flush is plain, and Sera stops talking with a snort. She’s drunk, too, even though her thoughts aren’t soggy with excess drink. In fact, she can manage another swig of wine, while Althea is fighting the feeling that she’s circling the rim of a very deep crater. This is not a place she wants to go even when she can muster a coherent thought.

“All right, then. No need to be prissy. But you’ll tell me something sometime, yeah? ‘Cause you’re my friend, and friends can’t keep all the details to themselves.”

Rather than deigning to give that a response at all, Althea groans, again, and lays all of her weight into the other woman’s shoulder. Let her companion support her now, when the darkness is starting to encroach on her faltering consciousness, when she’s withered and brittle as a fallen leaf, her thoughts really just webby fluff as insubstantial as the spun sugar she had once in her youth. She still remembers how unpleasant the lingering stickiness on her fingers had been.

Sera, who apparently is no longer finding chatting or hassling her amusing, calls to the Iron Bull. He comes over. Althea feels the great vibrations of his footsteps on the floorboards as he approaches.

“Can it wait? I’m about to take care of that serving girl who’s been wondering about me all night. And you too, if you’re interested.”

“Right, thanks, but you know I’m not. Anyway, just take a look at her. You tell me if it can wait!”

There’s a scoff. A very loud, and disrespectful, one. She really hasn't impressed him.

“All right, Boss, it’s time for you to get to bed.”

“I’m…”  She struggles with anything beyond that. Even stating her existence seems like quite a feat when she’s managed to accomplish it. Her next great accomplishment will be—give her time, she’s working on it.

“About to black out, so let’s get you to bed. Come on, up you go.”

Suddenly, the world really is as unstable as she’s started to experience it. Her feet are lifting by themselves, her torso is floating, her head is flying, her hair, which has somehow come unpinned, is flowing over her shoulders like plumes of mist harried by windstorms over the mountains surrounding Skyhold. She is in the air, suspended within it, and Bull has hoisted her over his shoulder.

Quite a display, an embittered part of her thinks. She is not happy with herself.

Though, with a shred of her reason left functioning, she is aware at least that she could not have managed the stairs by herself. The mortification of this, and the remains of her sense, mollify her into a sort of semi-sleeping state, in which she is quiet and watching the wavering world pass her by in a bilious blur. Into a dusky narrow corridor with shimmering, haloed torches, and down into the bowels of something which houses them within its vast caverns.

Three knocks on a door, and a hushed admonishment from a familiar voice. An exchange of a few words.

She is handed off, going from being a limp drape to a precious thing purposefully cradled. Solas holds her close to his warm chest, moving with her gently, gently, slowly, even as she can clearly make out the familiar, cutting lines of his disapproval.

“I lost a drinking game,” she explains. “Badly.”

“Clearly,” he says down to her. In the darkened room, lit only by candles and a guttering fire in the private fireplace, the edges of his features are incisive. The colour of his irises looks like a primordial, stormy grey.

“I’m sorry.”

“You are an adult woman who is capable of making her own choices.”

All the same, he is mindful every step of the way to the bed. And when he places her on it, he has never treated her with more care. She has rarely been more thankful for her pretty puny frame.

Off come her boots, which she makes some twitches towards helping to remove. Her belt next, then her constructed leather vest, shed like a shell she’s grown too large for. Then her tights, and there is the touch of his hands on her bare calves, and she remembers a better time. They had happened to be in a town with an alienage when there were three weddings on one day. A very auspicious thing, some of the elder elves there said, their visit happening to be when it was. And another special thing for their community to celebrate after so many grim, hard weeks of drudgery. He took her to the party and they slipped into the crowd unnoticed. This, even though they are who they are, even though he is an enigma and she is a religious figure with a glowing green hand, even though they both are mages, even though they both are finding comfort in the wrong kind of embrace. They danced, and around them were strung up galaxies of multicoloured lights made of tiny globes of pulsing magic. By the dawn of the following morning they had learnt several new songs, before they snuck back to camp with sore feet and full hearts.

When he touches her again, it is directly between her shoulder blades, to lay his palm flat on her back and splay his fingers slowly among the trailing silver tendrils of her undone hair. She sighs, her chest rising and falling into the easy give of the feathers, her face angled out to the side so she can breath fresh air.

With slow, deliberate movements of his hand, he soothes her. He uses his magic to stablise her careening thoughts and galloping heart. Some minutes pass. The occasional crackle of smouldering logs splitting is all there is to interrupt the quiescent rhythm of their breathing. Eventually, their inhalation and exhalations synchronise, and her eyes close against the cool, crisp fabric of the freshly washed and starched pillow case. As the Inquisitor, she is often given the best of what is available where she goes. Sometime, in moments like these, when she’s at a low and cannot deny how nice it is, these creature comforts are welcome.

When his hand eventually stops its ministrations, his fingers come to rest on a node along the concave curve of her spine. Tapping it once, twice, he checks whether she is still awake or not.

A drowsy humming from her. As she slowly rolls over and stretches her toes, she smiles at the hazy, amber-hued vision of him. He is light and warmth personified, a blazing furnace she would like to have close to her skin.

He gets up from the bed. The mattress is no longer depressed by his weight, so she moves some, and then moves again when he returns with a sleeping shirt for her. A flimsy thing, really, more frivolous than it is functional, and so much more to her liking than what she has ever been allowed. The fabric is remarkably diaphanous in the glimmering light as he holds it up for her to put over her head, once they have between the two of them unclasped her silverite and everite buckles and broaches and slipped off her embroidered tunic.

It is over her head like a veil, and she lays her weight against him.

“Solas, you’re so—”

He actually waits for her to form her thought. To conceive it, gather it, express herself when it hardly seems possible she can even to herself. He curls his long fingers over her shoulder and rests his chin on her crown. He is not averse to touching her, is he? Clearly. Yet why haven’t they—

“I don’t know. I love you. You know that, don’t you?”

“And I love you, my heart.”

The shift is pulled down and around her body, and he with, deftness and alacrity, begins to plait her hair. Both the brief and lingering touches along her scalp, her back, her neck, her shoulders, and her temples, are all more relaxing than she can resist. Sleep is coming, and it is coming quickly despite what’s troubling her.

He lays her down, and begins to wrap her up in comfort. Like a cocoon, like a nest, she is enveloped by him in blankets and sheets and a steady hand that strokes her cheek.

“Solas, I….”

“Will see me in the Fade, and in the morning.”

With that, he takes the hand she is reaching towards him and squeezes. He leans down and kisses her forehead, and lays down besides her after putting out all of the remaining flames.


	2. ii.

Clouds have gathered upon the rolling, barren plains of the Dales. A trackless land now, stripped of the old forests and their generous shelters of impressive branches, devoid of the farms which could have harvested an abundance at the end of this season, with the wildlife either slaughtered or dispersed to safer places. The wind runs rampant and wild through browning weeds, desiccated gardens, and infested acres of non-native crops, blowing feral waves and intricate meaningless bursts of almost-life into what plant growth remains, and maybe even thrives, after the people and animals have all had to depart. The scraggly wolves and few other straggling scavengers look as if they are haunted by hunger. 

Evening is coming. A splash of cerise staining the lower lying clouds heralds this, a stark streak of lucid colour upon the otherwise dun and drained grey everywhere else in the sky. The lower embankment of clouds is faster moving, coming in from the east, which is the direction the party is travelling. The higher clouds are several shades lighter and much more ponderous. Still, they all crowd out the blue of the sky, and it is not until the verge of the sun’s disappearance that more colours emerge. 

Hints of yolky yellow shading into goldenrod appear, delicate violet, sumptuous lavender that’s seconds away from staining plum. Eventually, when there are a handful minutes left of true light, the sun’s blessed radiance breaks through the dense, layered shroud, and is glinting suddenly on the creamy undersides of all the higher clouds. Their darkening grey is transmuted temporarily into molten oranges and wisps of neon pink, and then the glorious light is gone. 

Bull, who has taken point for their group, grunts as he looks ahead of them. He rolls his head to stretch his neck.

“A storm coming in.”

They all can see that. 

“Let’s keep going. We haven’t found any demons lurking after closing that last rift. And the Imperial Highway shouldn’t be too far ahead,” Althea adds, raising her voice higher than usual to be heard over the distance between the two of them. She is not sure how far away her voice may carry here. 

She senses Solas is going to speak, before he does. He and Sera are both behind her.

Althea has kept her left hand tight this entire time, to keep any flare ups of the Anchor unseen. Solas may have keen eyes and incisive understanding, but she is sure that Sera appreciates the concealing of any sputtering sickly, unnatural green.   

“No matter what we’ll need shelter.”

“The sooner, the better.” Sera, this time. Saying something aloud, unabashedly, that others would most likely grumble, with crossed arms or a turned-away face. She is stepping forward with one hand fiddling with a buckle at her side. Her armour will never slip when demons have been around. 

It’s a decision Althea must make, now, to deliberate on the input given to her, and to change her mind, or not. They will defer to her judgment whether she wants them to or not. No matter if hers isn’t the best mind, the most cunning, or the most strategic—even Solas, who never hesitates to voice his reluctance or derisory criticism at the time of discussion, who vociferously rebuffs the adjudication of personal responsibility, will follow out her orders. Once, in private, he had accused one of her gambits of being recklessly foolhardy to the point of negligent arrogance. But, when she had asked what he would have done, he had told her, in similar circumstances, he probably would not have done much better. Only experience would train her to do better. Until she got that, he would do his best to help her. 

As for Bull, he calls her—a diminutive human mage whose authority and controversy came initially from a foreign faith—Boss without complete irony. He is a Qunari who has no dire reason to break all of his carefully nurtured habits. Sera is just happier if she doesn’t have to think too hard.

So. It’s her choice. 

Get to Lydes and the rendezvous there as soon as they can, or resign them to another night out in desultory wastes likely to become a vast quagmire by the time they wake tomorrow. Their camp could wash away if they do not find adequate cover. A scrub-studded sheath of crags ahead does look promising, if they are willing to diverge a few degrees from the shortest, easiest course.

“Let’s get moving. I want—”

The sinister slithering suddenly scurrying along her skin is enough to interrupt her. It’s a familiar sensation by now, so she knows what to expect already before she has instinctually dug her heels in and spun around to see what has snuck up behind them. 

A shade, jealous and malignant, envious of any life, has followed them miles from the site of the closed rift. Concealed itself, apparently, and now it is striking out at her. The direct siphon on her essence is strong, and draining, and she staggers both from the shock and the surprise of the assault.

Sera nocks an arrow and releases. It whistles through the air, deadly to anything which is not incorporeal. In her haste she’s not grabbed one of her enchanted ones. Trying again, this time the arrowhead pierces the nightmare, and it cries out, the form of its gangly arm shattering as its claws scratch the air near the Inquisitor. 

Althea grabs the focus of her blade and summons it, Solas falls backwards gracefully behind the others, and the Iron Bull charges to what is now the frontline. This should be an easy fight. There should not be any mistakes despite any strained muscles or sore shoulders or shallower mana reserves.

But, sometimes, with exuberant efficiency, we overshoot the sufficient solution for something and create another problem. The ferocious strength of Bull’s swing overwhelms the restless spectre so thoroughly, it makes a move normally beyond the capacity of its limited intelligence, something more clever than an unexpected attack from behind the hunched backs of a group of wearied travellers. It shunts right past him and their Knight-Enchanter, scuttling as it moves like a predatory insect, as it slips by the two of them like a sentient oil slick, and it slams into Solas with a preternaturally forceful impact. Its mass isn’t much, its grotesque distended body is barely there, and yet it knocks him off his agile feet and collides with him onto the ground. This second impact makes a dusty heavy thud.

Frightened out of any semblance of sense or reason or felt obligation to make a plan, Althea pivots and dives onto the writhing heap of elf and corrupted soul. A step in and out of the Fade takes her entire body right through the Veil and propels her in reality. A missed heartbeat later, and she has the glittering blade of her ethereal, not-quite-focussed sword plunged into the shade’s heaving back. 

It shrieks a horrific sound. Bones could freeze and be shattered like fine porcelain. Turning from one prone mage to the frantic one, the shade begins sucking at her with the ravenous pull of mutilated, hollowed-out sorrow. Althea reaches to the Fade with all her will. She presents herself with all her earnest effort extended, pleading desperately for the aid she needs for an urgent resolution. Spirits respond to her—they touch her, they nudge her hands, they galvanise her very own soul. Together they cluster, and they return with her devoted focus across the Veil, and a great cascade of luminous energy is unleashed. 

The shade swipes at her, and she parries with a staff splintering with blistering power. 

Glassy, glimmering barriers are woven over bodies and limbs and, in a moment, have enveloped them, her and her companions all. Then strikes the storm. A maelstrom of liquid white and violet crashes over the shade.

Smoke rises from where it had flipped Althea onto her back. Thin black ribbons rise up from the streaks of charred dirt and perforated patches now littered with jagged fulgurites. There are traces of sludge around her.

Getting to her knees, she crawls over to him, doesn’t even mutter a groan of her own until she has checked on him.

Solas, who has drawn his staff, is keeping one hand braced on that. The other is held down on his chest. 

“I was hit,” he answers, before she can calm down enough to stammer out the words to ask him the question. Her heart feels like a trapped bat, unable to find space to blindly flee from danger. “But it’s not severe.”

“Let me see, Solas.”

For several seconds, he does not move. His eyes water, his shoulders shake. He looks her in the eye, and she sees him only give his consent once he’s sure she’s stable herself. His nod is slight and inscrutable. 

Able to lay her hands on him, she finds her fingers covered in profuse bleeding. But, instead of recoiling, she presses down, hard, on the strip of his own clothing he’s ripped up for himself. Already spirits are crowding at the Veil, volunteering to be used in the process of his healing. Over her shoulder, she tells her companions, “Solas, we’re going to have to move you a bit. We need to build a camp by that formation just ahead of us.”

That’s the decision she’s making.

 

**.**

 

 

An hour and a moderate crisis averted later, she is able to move on to mending the more superficial parts of his wound. The starburst shape of the puncture into his shoulder is progressively filling with raw, bright pink flesh, interlaced with fine silvery strands of scar tissue even she is not able to avoid. The blighted, lifeless parts of his flesh have been cut and burnt away, but the damage is extensive, and she’s not currently a clear-minded master able to work this involved magic in ideal conditions. When the wound is sealed, there will remain some signs of it having existed. 

Though he is before her, and not able to see the clues of her face and posture, he must sense her frustration with herself. 

“I can take it from here. You have already done a better job than I would have.”

Maybe, she thinks, if he were doing the healing on himself with his consciousness caught in a coma, would he have done this poorly. She rubs the pad of her thumb on the outermost edge of one of the wound’s branching tears, and the cool warmth of the spirit she’s channeling soothes her as well.

She really is that tired. Frowning, she bites her lip and then resumes her work. 

“I’ll start what I finished. Just rest, Solas.” 

Beneath the searching feel of her fingers, he does relax. Even so, he is the same as ever: vaguely poised, as if he is convinced he must always be vigilant. Always, always giving her the impression he has one eye over his shoulder, even if he’s just alone in a tent with her. The wards she set were stable and the rain coming down is not a gentle one. The wind crests by in mournful, wailing dirges.

But this is delicate work she is doing. This is a task which not many can perform, she knows, and fewer can manage at the mangled excuse for competency she’s now achieving. With this in mind, she allows herself a mental sigh, shrugs her shoulders, and murmurs her thanks to the spirits that are still putting up with her shoddy work. They want to help and she should be grateful for such avid co-operation. 

Althea shifts so she is sitting up more straightly. Her weight is primarily on her knees, and, this time, when she moves in touch him, she places both hands on him, and the bluish luminescence casts shimmering shadows with frothy silhouettes onto the thick canvas walls. The rest of the tent is still lit by a stout glowstone lantern. There’s a faint tinkling sound audible above the rain which reminds her of clinking glass phials and fine-wrought metal pieces being put down for the day. Brooches, clasps, a lovely hairpin—things once used to keep her robes neatly in place. 

Now, beneath her, she can feel Solas getting ready to actively turn towards her. He rolls more weight onto the back of the thigh closest to her, he leans towards her, he has his eyes on her working hands. 

The process of her healing is watched. Without comment, criticism nor praise, he watches her. 

His shoulder continues to knit back together. The hole is no longer a hole that shocks at first sight sight. It’s more a shallow depression that might cause a cringe or two, maybe a question if you realise it’s leftover from an incident of some interest. The very edges have begun to disappear and the new, fresh flesh growing no longer seems so achingly pure. 

A freckle or two is missing, now replaced by the marring lines which she thinks can be counted as a bit of ruin added to him. Her fault. A lapse in her own capabilities.

The thought of this causes the aura around her hands to gutter. Solas, discerning even when he is seemingly only half-way engaged, lightly and firmly lays his hand on hers. Just the one of is enough to cover all her fingers and both her palms. 

“That’s enough, my heart.”

“Not quite. I’m almost done.”

A few centimeters remain to be raised and evened out. There are a few patches she can help encourage along some more. 

“And you’re quite tired. If you wish to still continue when you are no longer so, then I’m sure you’ll do even better than you could now. So, for now….”

As he trails off, his fingers trail up her hands to her wrists, which he lovingly curls his fingers around. Her hands with their opalescent glow are removed from him, by him. Solas shifts again to pull her forward and urges her in front of him, guiding her close to him into his lap. Palm on his knee, Althea does her best to not smother him as she settles partially on him, partially on the blankets and bedding he’s sitting on. 

This is, with a few blinks to realise it, a different perspective. Sympathetic spirits still linger nearby, their magic and goodwill pervading the close, slightly damp air. He takes her hand, from which the last few blue sparks glister, and lays her fingertips on his chest. 

“See what you’ve done?”

Smooth to the touch. Warm, and living. She can faintly feel the rhythm of his proudly beating heart. 

“Well, I...I’ve always thought you looked better from this angle, anyway.”

“Is that so? Is my backside not pleasing to you?”

“Hmm,” she hums to herself in her throat, with a faintly teasing echo following in her chest, as he lays his free hand across the small of her back. The whole width of it is taken up, with some finger left over for him to wrap around her side. His hold settles among the folds of her tunic. “Your backside perfectly suits you.”

“Ah, but that doesn’t mean it’s adequate.”

A quickening, now, and a small release of the petrifying tension which has tightened into self-agonising pits in her stomach. Within this low place is a burgeoning of private warmth, which is budding and may bloom, is easing her as it starts to promise more and more to unfurl. By degrees she has started the process of feeling better. And it will be awhile before the pressure can build to be too much.

“Perhaps,” she says, and her glancing insouciance catches his interest just like she knew it would. Given to him by anyone else, his frustration would begin to mount. But with her, it’s different—she’s different, he’s told her. She’s amazing, she’s an exception, she is above all else a bright rare thing in this world. A vibrant being whose very living is a captivating inspiration to him.

How could she not find that devastatingly gratifying, is something she has wondered before. 

Her hand slips from his grasp, and that hand goes roaming and roving to the subject of their shallow conversation. For all the work that’s gone into healing him, her fingers are firm as she begins to prod at muscle and bone in perusal. 

“What,” he says, as he shifts again so that the site of her search is now just slightly out of reach. Her knuckles brush along his spine and the ends of her nails are just short of the hem of his leggings. If she’s going to keep feeling him up, she’s going to have to show a bit more interest. Work for it, as it were. “Do you think you’re up to?”

“Gathering impressions before I render my verdict.”

“Oh? Should I put you back down then, and stand up for you and let you look until you’re satisfied?”

She grins, despite herself. She admires how flat a brow and mouth he can manage to keep when his eyes are so illuminated by amusement. “I think for now I’d rather investigate how I feel about the view I currently have. And its benefits. And its possibilities.”

“Those, you may find, might be endless.”

She moves to kiss him, and there he is, up to meet her, soft lips hard and harsh on hers already. Hands are given free range now: the parts of his back which she can reach are hers to claim with scatterings of rapid strokes. He finds her scalp, her neck, her shoulders, her hip, her upper arm. Her jaw, too, as he locks his thumbs behind her ears and pulls her ever closer.

The utter opposite of the jealous shade’s malicious drain, he shares with her his life. The heat, the energy, the fury, the beating in his chest, the delicious burn of a growing blazing, he gives it all to her in ardent munificence. 

The first fluttering of a sound is from her. As ever, his answer isn’t far behind, far more visceral, far more felt, a rumble for her that must be a quake for him. An arm goes around the nape of her neck, strong and solid like a wall to hold her. She lays into him, pushing him backwards so that he is prone on his back and she has significant leverage. Gripping his shoulders, she pushes and pushes again. Her audacity is derived from the tremor that has developed in his clutching hand a hushed breath away from pulling at her hair. Their teeth clack. 

Then, before he can quite re-capture her lips, she bites the corner of his mouth.

Solas flips her over, and looms with such intensity in his eyes. They are grey, and fixed upon her, and hard and bright with uncomprehending disbelief. As if he cannot figure out this one thing, this one single thing out of everything—how can she possibly be? Not for the first time the sight of her must strike him like an epiphany.

Crashing into her, he fights to take control of her with a fervour that could be confusing, or unexpected, given his recent injury, his usual calmness, and the reverent tenderness with which he always treats her. Sometimes, she herself is surprised by his ferocity, but she’s also enthralled to it. She helps him along by bucking an angled hip and threatening to reach and twitch and bite his ear, and he responds with a forceful cessation of some of her remaining free movement. He pins that cheeky, exploratory hand between her body and his weight.  

It ends when they are both beyond breathless on the brink of black.

Still, she is not sated. As her breath returns and the craze of her heart is cured, this couldn’t be more clear to her. Riled, unsatisfied, she inches over to him to check on his state. 

Calmer, now, and cooler, much more so than her.  A hand on his slowly rising, and slowly falling, chest is still and relaxed, his fingers curled into loose almost-circles with the cleaned nails grazing his palm. 

Althea doesn’t get it. Is he just that easy, is he just that self-contained, that he can finish quickly and quietly without her noticing? Does he even need her at all?

She stares at him, and he stirs. He looks over to her, and reaches out to trace the soft lines of her cheek. A finger comes to rest on the edge of her swollen, probably reddened, lips. He touches the pleasing product of his work.

“Solas, are you….”

He waits for her. 

Looking at him for what feels like a long, long time, for an epoch of silence that is almost as vast and torturous as the gap between when he was attacked and when the shade was vanquished, she is not able to gather the words that can contain, express, and convey what she is feeling. 

So she reaches out for him. Caution dances in her movements, and jitters in the pass she makes by his prominent hipbone. Gently, he reaches down and halts her progress. He takes the hand he’s caught, and brushes her knuckles against his lip, and the gesture hits her harder than an admonishment ever could have. 

Choking, struggling, she tries to keep back the flood of fears. But the anxieties sluice through, slicing through every careful defence, and every clever fortification, and every robust feeling. 

It’s a harsh whisper, because she is unable to think of anything that’s coming that won’t be a harsh truth. “Is it because I’m human?”

For all his previous sprawling comfort, he doesn’t hesitate to draw himself up and her near. Soon, she cannot see his face, she can only feel him. His body, against hers. And the manifold multitude of contacting points all along their limbs and torsos and angled heads. She feels the swallow in his throat. 

Maybe, she thinks, he thinks he needs to look out for her. It could be that, or any other number of things: a lingering fear for his own life, a reasonable doubt of the protection she can actually offer. She has power but she cannot change every mind in the world, she cannot change what is and isn’t accepted and therefore liable to get you killed. She loves him, with all her human heart, but that doesn’t mean she can keep and fulfil every promise she gladly would make. It could be that she shouldn’t confuse concern for safety with disinterest or inadequacy. 

Maybe, it isn’t a failure of hers. 

But she needs to hear that. It has to come from him. 

Solas draws a line down her spine and the tremble is back. She can feel it before he’s stopped moving. 

“I mean….” She starts again, after his silence has become lengthier than hers. She cannot endure it any longer, and he has embraced her so thoroughly she cannot fidget without feeling even more unbearable fault. “You do touch me, and I like what we do, but is it, for you—”

A kiss interrupts hers. A passionate, desperate gesture, boundlessly more intimate than anything exchanged earlier, it’s a want and a need to tell her that no, it’s not her, _never_ her. An infinitesimal snag catches her attention though, before he pulls away and faces her. He’s looking down as he’s saying, “my heart. You are beautiful.”

She wants to believe him, she really does. She lifts her hands to his which are cradling the base of her skull, and tangles hers with his. She wants them to be together, even if she knows a but is forthcoming.

“But, some things are easier in the Fade.”

With just a twitch between each thought, Althea understands.

And that makes sense, doesn’t it?

That he can only manage that in the Fade. He has spent so much of his life there, and he has seen and felt and tasted such wonders—conditioning, is what she thinks it’s called. 

A perfectly natural response of a body adjusting its functions, and perhaps something she should have expected. 

“Ah,” she says. She adds simply, “So we should be doing this, there?”

“Something like that,” he says, and she couldn’t say exactly what kind of expression it is that careens across his face. Eagerness, earnestness, the relief of honesty, unbridled desire, a descending need to impose wise limits already. “It might not be what you expect, my heart.”

“I don’t expect anything,” she says, and he holds her close to him again like a precious thing. Her chin is perched on swell of his arched shoulder. “I want to make you feel good, too. I want to try. At least let me do that.”

His chest is bare and she is still dressed, so it’s something that will take a little bit of time to prepare for anyway. She has some room to set up a mental space and meditate on the possibilities that have just recently blossomed luxuriantly before her. The ideas presenting themselves are ripe as succulent fruit, and, regardless of whatever he might have once said about colourful temptations in the past, she just has to not be shy about taking them. And, to bite down. 

 


	3. iii.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The not safe for work bit. Notes at the end.

When she awakens to a dream, it is with plain hesitation that her eyes finally start to open.

Odd, comes to her the flittering, vaguely pulsing thought, before it passes, vibrating away into the dampened edges of what she can perceive. The next thought that comes stretches, with some elasticity, outwards and away from her primary concern, as she reaches to her face to scrub at her eyes with the heels of her ungloved palms. Something is not as it should be. It takes her some time to realise the implications of what has occurred to her: since when has she, talented mage and experienced user of spirit magic, ever had any difficulties with the nightly transition to the Fade? This is routine for her, it should be mundane, like attuning her staff or having indescribably bland porridge again for breakfast. Such constituted the many prosaic, blurry, and now faded, days for most of her sedentary life.

Then, with straining, watery eyes still laminated by a glaze lingering from an unaccountably hard waking, she looks up, and tries to take in what is all around her.

Here, wherever it is that she is, is not a part of the Fade she recognises. These are like her memories, but they are not quite right, they are shaded by a trace of the unfamiliar. They feel as if they have been touched by someone else—it’s possible that they’ve been tampered with, or altered in some other way.

But, as she continues to come to herself, she still has yet to feel threatened. The sense of tension is coming from her, she realises, it’s a product of her nerves and unease. It is not from any disturbance in what is around her. The longer she is here, the more she realises this, this place, is exactly as it was meant to be. The unsettling tone set by discrepancies is coming from her own expectations.

Finally, she is able to _see_ her surroundings.

She is almost in Haven. She is close, or in an area that had been close, to the place that could be called the Inquisition's first home, and her first place of real rest after the Circle in Ostwick had fallen to the clashing of its own mages and templars. Nestled between several hills is an elliptical basin which slopes gently down into its main point, the solidly frozen lake with its starkly cracked surface. In the very centre of this basin, where she is laying flat on her back with her hair pulled tight against her head in a restraining plait, there is ample snow and open space. Around her, before the rocky ridges, are white-dusted copses of evergreen trees, the branches of which are dressed with layers of fresh snowfall, angled downwards under the accumulated weight of it. The sky above is clear. Not a single scudding cloud is there to obscure the eerily beautiful spectacle of the southern auroras. Green, blue, tinged with sashes of purple, they streak across the deep dark relentless void they are suspended in, they outshine even the eerie Breach. The moon has started setting.

And, on one the ridges, is the silhouette of a familiar form, both cast in shadows by the moon, and lit dimly by the looping veils of coloured light. He is nodding when she spots him in. For the first second, she thinks he is mulling something over, and then in the next she understands that one of the shadows around him is another, lesser, figure. More nebulous than him from her vantage point, it is hard for her to see, but she figures it must be a spirit with whom he is engaged in conversation. There is some sort of exchange going on between them. He gestures several times, and, when he does speak, it is with lips shaping foreign forms. He says something in elvhen she cannot even begin to guess at, much less try to comprehend. Then, an inclining of his head, a touch of his hand to his chest, and he’s turning towards her. The shadow has retreated into others.

So, he has noticed her. He has started his descent down the hill. Within her, her desire for him has kindled. The smoke and the heat which are beginning to rise, they promise to her already so much as portents of the blaze that may come to burn.

Shifting, now, Althea clenches her left hand where it lies, in the middle of her chest. Odd, she thinks. The sensation is not what she expected. There’s no slight sting of pain, no pins and needles flooding between her fingers, no reminder of where something unknown and ancient had reached out and marked her. Not as its victim, she reminds herself, no matter how brightly and wildly the gash may glow, nor how strongly it lashes out against her whenever she uses it shut rifts and forcefully repair the Veil. There is none of the violent backlash of someone else’s immensely powerful magic rebelling against its unwanted vessel.

Yet, when she raises her hand to see it set up before the night sky, the Anchor is still there, embedded within her skin. It is quiet, it is docile, but it pulses still. It is doing so in time with the auroras, if she’s not mistaken, as if they and it somehow share the same secret origin unknowable to her. And to Solas, too, who seems to otherwise know everything about the world and all that has ever been in it.

He is upon her now. With dreamily elegant movements he bends over to offer her his hand. For an amount of time she doesn’t currently have the capacity to accurately measure, Althea looks up at him. His hand is extended towards her—his wrist leads into his forearm, his forearm to his arm, which inclines into the slope of his shoulder that seems to her more substantial than it ever has been before. That may be because of its stronger shape and silhouette: on top of a long cloak, he has wrapped a thick and hefty pelt around his shoulders. The colour of it is hard for her to perceive precisely. It is brown, then black, and even white, once, when she closes her eyes to rest them and tries to recall the image of him to herself. It is wolf’s fur, she suddenly knows, the moment she takes his hand and he lifts her up, with a smile and no apparent effort, out of her cradle of frost.

On her own two feet now, her eyes linger on his considerably plump lips. She bows over to dust off her front, and then looks back at him, taking toward him one of the few steps that lay between them. “I don’t remember this ever happening. Not like this. You never found me, what, passed out in the snow?”

“Nothing happened like this. This isn’t a quite memory.”

“Is this like what you’ve done with me before? So this is a dream?”

“Something like that. It is a dream made of memories.”

“What’s the difference?”

Instead of answering, instead of giving any clarification or context, he lays his hands on her, urges her to turn around, and begins to brush away the snow from her backside, and she shivers when he gets to the nape of her neck. He takes care of her, even if she isn’t cold, even if she doesn’t need exactly this from him. In fact all she can really feel is his warmth. As if he were the only thing real in the entire world. And if he were she would need to stay by him, lest the dark, heatless nothing beyond overwhelm her with its utter lack of anything else. She would have to cling to him, depending on him for everything as she stayed by his side. She would need him to stay alive. Until the magic in her hand finally consumed her whole.

“Is this your dream, or mine?”

Althea persists on the point. Usually she doesn’t have to ask again to get Solas to explain something. Even if something is wrong, he isn’t, in her experience, the kind to hesitate. Turning on him, or, trying to, Althea leans into her left side and reaches her hand towards his shoulder to grasp onto to convey the sincerity—and seriousness—of her looking to him for an answer. But his hands go to her waist and her hips, and his eloquent fingers grip onto her and don’t allow her to move. She’s locked against him, her only option to see him is to look up and glimpse what she can over her shoulder.

Still, she fidgets. “Solas—”

“It’s hard to say, _vhenan_ , exactly what is whose. Mostly yours, but there’s a bit of mine, and a bit of nobody’s in particular. Take the auroras, for example. Who doesn’t dream of them at least once, when they’ve seen them? It’s a sight that is rare to be experienced only the one time.”

It’s been awhile since he’s spoken any elvhen to her. Shifting, again, she places her hands on his and weaves them together. Her own hipbone is sharp against her knuckles and thin fingers that become caught between her bone and his strength. This sensation reminds her suddenly of something: a heated throbbing in a constricting throat. Like delicate, foolish little birds, pretty, and often doomed by their own vivacious singing. They flutter fiercely when they are trapped. Becoming frantic is how they kill themselves.

Scrunching her brow and closing her eyes, she lets the the image go, lets other things instead suffuse her. It’s not what they are talking about. She would much rather imbue herself the irresistible incandescence her need for him is inspiring inside of her.

“I see,” she says lightly, after musing about what he’s said.

“Of course, these just aren’t any auroras. They are the first ones you ever saw. In Haven.”

“I’ve been told it’s rare to see them so far north. It was a special occurrence.”

“And a beautiful, sentimental one. Many times I’ve seen you dream of it, and the emotion it brings when you do. I’ve seen what it means to you.”

“So, do you often watch me sleep?” she asks him as her head presses back into his chest.

“I think you’d like me to admit to doing it more than is proper.”

“As if watching anyone’s dreams could be proper. At all. And not a total invasion of privacy.”

“No, not that—my heart,” he starts, and the firmness of his grasp on her slips. “It’s been the times we’ve dreamt together. Sometimes you start off in unexpected places as you enter the first stages of sleep. The borderlands, so to speak, between waking and dreaming.”

“Relax, Solas, it’s all right. I don’t mind. In fact, I kind of wish you did watch a bit more. It’s...well, you know, you’d get something like firsthand experience. Of my fantasies.”

“Ah, that. Fear not. I already know what it is that you like, _vhenan_. What it is that you need from me—”

With that, his hand begins to roam lower and lower, his warm fingertips reach her inner thigh and could tickle with the enticing lightness of his touches. Then, without a preamble, his magic flares on those same fingertips and traces neon-bright lines on petal-soft skin fragile as any blooming flower.

Grasping for breath and understanding, she wordlessly exclaims at the jolt of sudden, exquisite pleasure and the tantalising promise of more when the energy doesn’t dissipate. He does not revoke his advances. Soon, it seems, as he dances his fingers nearer and nearer her core. Then, as she’s pushing back into him as hard as she can, his touch flashes over the exact spot she wants him to lay claim to.

“Ah, that’s—”

Again, he touches her. With a circular motion he draws from her a single, ragged breath, as she jerks back again and again into him. He steadies her. He doesn’t let her go, he drags his mouth over her jaw and catches his teeth on her ear. And the sparks and chills collide through her, crashing against anything that might have been resistance, until they are fast, flowing, free eddies rushing beneath the surface of her heated skin. Close, close, and closer, she has his name on her tongue not for the first time, but it will be the first time he hears how she holds onto the sibilant s’s at the start and end of his name.

Or, it could have been. He could have heard her strangle on his name if he’d given her exactly what she was expecting.

He moves his hand up to her navel and rests it there, with fingers coiled into the shallow hollow created by her discomforted posture. She is left, unattended and unsated, to deal with her want for him as it cools to a less fevered desire. Still, the lack of bothers her. She aches and twitches and needs.

Frustrated, she tries to turn around on him. Again he does not let her—he secures her in place with an arm under her chest, insistent fingers that clutch at her side and find purchase on her flesh. Desperate, seeking to drag him into this with her, she reaches back to grope around for any evidence that he’s getting something from this too.

There. Coy as she can be, she first brushes back against his erection. Then she shamelessly presses back against him, just a jerk away from rutting. He sinks his teeth into her shoulder as he makes a deep sound. Like from an animal, or a predator, it comes up from a deep place to let her know there is danger here. And above them the auroras continue to shimmer and blush fantastic hues.

“Solas, I—”

“You’re, ah….” His breath is on her ear, on her neck, in her hair, as he plants his chin on her head and he tries to shimmy out of her grip. But she won’t let him, she cages him, she holds on just intently as he does. She wants. And so does he. Finally, he is willing, and able, and close, so she’s not going to let it go so easily. Even if means she has to encourage him to let go of himself. To help him push past his restraint, and commit the acts she has seen burning in his eyes and flaring beneath his bruising touches, to get him out of the confines of what he’s been forcing himself not to do. Still there are boundaries he has set for himself.

He growls. He bites her neck and marks her once more, and she is stunned with her own stoked desire for a few crucial seconds. Shifting, but keeping her near to him, he unclasps the cloak and pelt adorning his shoulders. He fumbles them before him and with her clumsy help, between messy slips against his cock and nips at her ear, they manage to lay them out enough to serve as a surface for her to rest on.

Then he pushes her down, and she sinks into the snow. Her elbows and her arms crunch their forms into the yielding surface, and her shins too, which bear the weight of her thighs as he bears down on her for support while he actively tries to unclasp her belt and get her breeches over her hips.

She recognises the clothes she is wearing. Supple black leather breeches fine to touch and handle, lined with a brushed fabric so soft she would have sworn it couldn’t be cotten. They are even easy to get in and out of with steady hands. A purple tunic, banded with dark black. The fitted vest which captures both her body heat and the paltry curves of her body. With a generous wrap of rich cloth around her waist, an expanse of grey-blue from the tips of her hips up to prominent ridges of her ribs, designed as an extra layer to keep her small form from freezing. It is not the most flattering of outfits, but it is functional. And it had worked. It had kept her warm in Haven.

And he had noticed her anyway. The brightness of her had been enough to draw him in. He ended up dazzled by her. Just as much as she was, by him. That her breasts probably couldn’t quite fill up his palm, that didn’t seem to matter very much to him.

Nor does it actually matter, now. Now her pale back is exposed and flush against him, he wastes no time and reaches back into her layers to caress one of her breasts. The way he massages and tweaks and almost pinches without actually hurting her, but puts her right on the verge of a spark and a yelp and a lewd thrust backwards into him, he is attending to her. He does so with no lapses or snags that would catch like thistles if his attention were anything less than enthusiastic. Warmth and moisture have gathered between her thighs because of his ministrations. All she can do is grind into him to signal her eager need—and he must feel her, he must. His abiding restraint makes her ache as he keeps the majority of his weight purposefully on top of her. Pining her, he intends for her to feel the full force of him.

One finger enters her first. It’s not tentative, she’s sure his touch on her really can’t be, but it’s unbearably tender however long or surprisingly calloused his joints may be. He explores her, he feels her, he waits to see how she responds and receives him. With the second finger and the third he becomes more aggressive. He is persistent to the point of prodding her as he both prepares her, and lets her know how badly he wants her with just these simple strokes.

Then he’s _really_ inside her, and up upon her, and splitting her down to her very core, where his magic-laced hand has decisively been placed. Heat and cold coil around her and caress her and ravish her until it’s nearing too much for even a mage’s mind to understand. Here she is, beneath him, with him in her, the sheer physicality of it overwhelming her, with the shock of his magic added on top of it so she’s feeling it all at the same time, even if this is a dream. The intimacy of it staggers her, she has to bite down on her palm to keep from crying out before she has properly reached her end.

Even with all of his attention devoted to her—his clever pleasuring at her most sensitive points, his preparation, his burning mouth on the nape of her neck, this whole place painted from precious memories—she cannot allow herself an audible expression. She needs—

Silence. Stillness. Silhouettes and ghostly outlines that leave her with enough space to fill up according to her own will. She needs to keep it within herself to feel it most purely and intensely. It isn’t fire which overwhelms her—it’s the luminescence of her own entwined lust and love which has demanded, and received, its satisfaction.

As for him, he surely can feel how tightly she’s clenched around him. How utterly she’s consuming him, how completely he has enlivened her.

She shudders against him, and keeps shuddering. He continues to ride her and encourage her as she is carried away on her own pleasure, tumbling and writhing and exulting in the all-devouring wake. At some point, after her nerves have exhausted themselves with the explosion of sensual spasms and all possible anxieties have ebbed away, as she lies limp as a toppled tree, he joins her. Or so she figures, anyway. She finds him leaving her with a slick ease and covering her and then enveloping her in an embrace. He, who smells sweetly of old manuscripts and forgotten summer evenings, holds her in a way that is even now staidly possessive. Not just lying with her, he has her held to his chest, and he has angled his back protectively to keep out any cold that could creep in.

Reaching for him, Althea finds the hand he’s left to rest chastely on her side. She takes it, and places it over her heart, and curls her fingers and her warmth around it. Envelop him, if she could, but this sharing will have to do to. Their activity has carved a groove for them to settle into in the snow. The fur is pleasant on her cheek like a sentimental nothing whispered to her over and over again.

It occurs to her that he still has given up his protection from the elements for her. He benefits too, now that he’s lying down, but she still is the one benefitting the most from two layers between her and the stuff blanketing the entirety of the world that can be seen. With a sympathetic shiver she leans back into him. The swell of her rump ends up slotted between his stomach and his thighs, with her legs wrapped firmly around his. Sharing her vitality with him in every little way she can manage is least she can do.

“Solas, that was….” A lot of things. While she thinks of which one it is she wants to actually comment on, his breath rustles the strands of her hair that have become loose and he taps a tuneless rhythm onto the flat plane between her breasts.

It was the first time for them.

The first time she’s been pleasured by magic.

Not what she was expecting. But, good.

She is glad. She is still glowing.

It will be a shame that they have to wake up.

And when they do, what exactly will be—

No, not that, she tells herself, willing herself to let it go and lay undisturbed. There’s no need silt up this cool, clear, calm into a cloudy, murky mess. No speculation about change, no expressions for differences and things that are probably never going to be. He told her how it was with him before they got here. He then gave her what she wanted, and she gave him what she’s been wanting to. There’s no need to ruin it. Some things are simply easier in the Fade—whether they’re actually simple or not. It’s not about complexity. It’s about the way things are.

He must sense her turmoil. And of course he does. Incisive and insightful, clever and keen, it is not so very hard to believe that he can perceive everything about her. Now he has seen her in all of her private moments—her dreams, her nightmares, her trembling passion.

She never gets to say what exactly this was to her, because he lays his head on hers and, once again, draws her in closer to him, and he is here with her. The auroras continue to shift and tint the world in green, purple, indigo, violet. Stars vanish from the void. All of this passes in silence, as they lay there together, resting in a shared dream, until they wake to the next day.

 

**. . .**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! So, if you're seeing this, thanks so much for reading to the end. Honestly, it means so much to me. Normally smut really isn't my thing but... If it can be believed, this actually felt kind of important to write. Solas is such a passionate and expressive person, and with the little hints that get dropped in party banter about what he's gotten up to in the Fade, this felt inevitable. I wanted to leave it a bit ambiguous however: just like how he leaves it with the Inquisitor. Can he only get off in the Fade? It doesn't matter; the point is that he'll only let himself be with her if it's there, because it technically isn't happening. He can dream of being with her--but that's it. If it were to happen in the waking world, it would be tantamount to rape under the circumstances. And he loves her too much to do that to her. She of course doesn't know this. Not now, anyway. Maybe she'll learn about it in the future, when so many things are revealed to her.
> 
> So. Maybe look out for that. o7


End file.
